Persephone
by Literary Portals
Summary: A witch comes to Beacon Hills. Born of a desire for fic where Peter is nothing less than what he is, and for him to meet his match. Lacking in plot. Wish fulfillment fic, read at your own discretion. Coda to "The Girl Who Knew to Much" and only vaguely.


There's a witch in Beacon Hills. She sits in the coffee-shop and sips the coffee that is more cream and sugar than the bitter stuff, and dozes in the sunlight. She's hardly out of high-school, with short brown hair and brown eyes and brown freckles dusted all over her face, arms, and long legs barely covered in shorts.

Peter watches her as he orders his coffee (black like his soul, said Stiles once) and thinks to himself. She is young and new and a threat and an opportunity, and he wonders what he will do with her. He will do something with her. He is Peter Hale, and the witch is potential. He always loved potential.

* * *

"There's a witch in Beacon Hills," he tells Derek. Derek's pack of hormonal balls of angst are lounging in front of the Hale house, enjoying the summer sun and the lack of threats from darach or alpha pack. Peter doesn't want them to get too complacent, because where would be the fun in that?

He's barraged with questions and squawking from the puppies and sullen demands for more information from Derek's ever-expressive eyebrows, and he feeds them what he knows.

"She's young and lives alone downtown. Miserable place. She works at the grocery store. She's oozes magic like its perfume."

"Well fuck," says Stiles, "What is up with Beacon Hills?"

* * *

They corner her behind her apartment building, where she's just getting into her rusted old sedan that smells like a meadow, a real one, not those offensive chemical air-fresheners.

Stiles is very much against this plan to corner a potential threat at night when they don't know her powers, and Peter would be inclined to agree if he didn't think this was a wonderful test of her abilities.

In any case, the witch turns at the growl Derek gives her, and not a hint of fear weaves its way into her scent (also of flowers, and cold, dark earth, and something else Peter can't name but it makes him uneasy).

"Freaking werewolves," she says, throwing her hands heavenwards.

Stiles snorts. Derek's growl grows in pitch. "Why are you here?" he asks.

"For the darach, alpha," she replies, "And anyone allied with it."

A black film slides over her bright eyes, and her short hair rises to float around her head as though she's underwater. The smell in her scent that Peter can't name intensifies. Peter steps back, and before the stupid wolves can launch an attack and get themselves killed, he says mildly, "We hunt it too."

The witch blinks, and is a normal teenage girl again. "Well then," she says, smiling, "Nice to meet you."

"Holy shit," Stiles breathes. Scott clutches at Isaac's shaking arm, and Derek is half-transformed. They all stare at her in alarm.

"What did you expect would happen when you decided to corner a witch at night?"

"I think I really like you," Stiles says fervently. Peter shares the sentiment.

* * *

"Has anyone told you about your spark?" she asks Stiles, panting as she helps drag Derek's unconscious body into Stiles' Jeep.

Deucalion and the alphas had attacked again, only to leave as suddenly as they had come when the witch barrelled into the fight, eyes black as pitch and hands raised. Peter is busy stitching the hole in his stomach together with vague disinterest, and listens quietly, trying not to breathe too deeply.

He can see Stiles start theatrically from where he's lying. "How'd you know?"

"There is no way to say this that is not going to sound creepy," the witch says, and tucks Derek's arm into the car, "But you taste like lightning."

Isaac wheezes out a laugh as Scott helps him to his feet. They both ignore Peter, who feels affronted but unsurprised.

Stiles blushes in the moonlight, "Yeah, defo creepy," he says.

"Do you want some training?"

"It's only a spark."

"A spark can catch fire with a little effort."

There is silence then, as Stiles thinks about it. He thinks so loudly that Peter can hear the cogs in his brain turning, and prods at his stomach instead. Yes, he's healed. He gingerly sits up, and the witch glances at him.

"Alright?" she asks.

"Oh, I'd hoped you'd died so that we wouldn't have to deal with you," Stiles says drily, and misses the witch's speculative look between him and Peter. Peter sees, and it pleases him.

"Sorry to disappoint," he replies, "Take the witch up on her offer."

"She has a name, you know," Stiles bites back as Scott and Isaac manoeuvre onto Scott's motorcycle.

Silence reigns. The witch giggles. Stiles turns to her, blushing again. "I can't believe I never asked, but, you know, alpha pack. What _is_ your name?" But then Stiles' phone rings, and it's the sheriff warning them that a squad is coming to check out the disturbance, and they're too busy evacuating the premises for the witch to tell them her name.

Peter makes a note to ask her later.

* * *

"What are you doing here?"

Peter slips silently into the hospital room behind Derek. The witch sits beside a sleeping Cora, hand in hand with his niece.

Derek is quiet but vibrating with suppressed rage. The witch looks up at them, her eyes black. "She'll not stay, Derek Hale," she says, her voice an amalgamation of many voices not her own, "She was meant for death and death will take her back."

Derek lunges, but the witch has already let go of Cora and to their bewilderment, passes out.

"Take her out," Derek orders him, "Don't let anyone see. Take her home and bind her and keep her there until I come back."

"Easier said than done," Peter replies, but obligingly picks her up and through sheer force of will to be ignored, leaves the hospital with the unconscious girl without getting stopped even once.

That's Beacon Hills for you.

* * *

The girl wakes up slowly, and when she comes to, she looks around calmly before fixing her eyes on Peter, where he stands outside the bars that jail her.

"Iron works on the fey," she says lightly, "Not on witches."

"Are you a witch?," Peter retorts, leaning close.

The girl smiles and sits up, cracking her neck. "Stiles warned me of you, you know. That you were dangerous, and to be wary."

Peter inclines his head. "Quite true."

The girl's smile grows. "Stiles tried to warn me about _you_."

He senses that she's mocking him, and allows blue to bleed into his eyes. "Stiles has more sense then my nephew," he replies, "Tell me, are you at all afraid of what I could do to a girl I have trapped?"

She breathes in heavily, her smile still sharp and wide. "Yes," she says, "If you had me trapped."

Between one blink and the next, she's stretched her arms through the bars and dragged him near. "Good night Peter Hale," she says, and he smells the wolfsbane before he sees it sprout from her hands and wind around his neck.

* * *

When he comes to, he is surrounded by mountain ash, and Stiles, Scott, and Isaac are watching him with unrestrained amusement and vindication. Dried wolfsbane flowers surround him, tainting the air, and the witch is long gone.

"What happened to you?" Stiles asks.

"Get me out," Peter snarls, and Stiles steps back.

"Nah, I'll wait 'til Derek gets here," he says, big eyes gleaming, and he, Scott, and Isaac scurry up the stairs, leaving him trapped in the basement.

"Witches," Peter says sourly to himself, and thinks that the game has begun. But who is the cat, and who is the mouse?

* * *

She picks lightly at a pomegranate, plucking seeds one by one from their papery flesh, and watches him from beneath her lashes, sprawled on her bed.

"That was not amusing," he tells her, stepping out of the shadows and into the pool of light cast by her lamp.

"Not to you," she concedes.

"What's your name?" he asks softly, stalking towards her. The witch continues eating her pomegranate, and he breathes in her scent as his claws slide out. The other scent that weaves through hers is there, subtle under the heavy scent of flowers, precisely subdued.

"Anna," she replies.

Her heart is steady but he knows she's lying, somehow, and lunges to pin her flat. The pomegranate rolls from her hand and falls off the bed with a thump.

"What's your name?," he asks again, tracing the line of her neck. Blood beads under his claw, but she does not flinch.

"Anna," she replies, and licks at the sour red juice staining her fingers.

* * *

Anna takes Peter with a moan, breathless and heady and flush against him, all soft curves and eagerness. Anna takes him and takes and takes and takes until he feels hollowed out, undone, and then licks into his mouth to breathe him full again.

* * *

"Cora's not supposed to be alive," Anna tells Derek when she finally corners him. "Just as Peter isn't supposed to be."

He stares stonily at her, and her face is soft with sadness. "I'm sorry, I never chose to be the voice of the scales, but it's true. She'll be a blight on the earth if anyone tries to hold her here. The best you can do is make her happy with the time she has left."

She's almost left the house when he asks, "Scales?"

"A way of instilling balance," she replies. He doesn't ask more. He doesn't want to know, or maybe she doesn't want him to know. She leaves, and he's left alone while his pack watches a movie at Stiles', and tries to figure out how to lose his sister again.

* * *

"He's a murderer," Stiles tells her, and Peter listens in with the rest of the pack, who are there to watch over their human as he takes lessons with the witch.

"So are you," Anna replies.

"He killed his niece, the nurse who took care of him, tried to kill Derek! He's like a grenade!" Stiles yells, and something crashes to the ground. "He's insane! He mind-raped Lydia to come back after I killed him, after I burned him _to death_."

Silence rings. Derek stiffly does not look his way, though Isaac stares unabashedly. Scott is frowning at Anna's window, concern for his friend in every line of his body, and Allison presses tightly against him, tension flowing off her.

Peter waits for Anna's reply.

"Yes," she says, "I use the internet you know, I know all about Beacon Hill's murder rate."

Something else crashes. Peter imagines that Stiles threw something, which is not the smartest course of action to take in the domain of a witch.

"Do you love him?" Stiles demands, "Or do you like, get off on his psychopathy or something?"

Anna laughs. "I don't and will never love him. He is exactly like a grenade. You never know if his pin is in or not." She laughs again, full-throated. "It's delicious. I've never felt so alive, with him."

"Your insane," Stiles says, finally.

"We make a good pair, then," Anna answers, "Now concentrate on the havoc in your head and _will_ those jars repaired, with all their ingredients back in them."

Stiles grumbles, and quiet reigns.

A car drives by, and the pack listens and watches and thinks. Peter restrains the smile biting at his lips.

* * *

He is always on the edge of sleep when Peter recognizes the integral part of Anna's scent. It is death, ancient and enduring, that weaves perfectly with the smell of flowers that flows, sometimes cloyingly and sometimes softly, around her. He never remembers when he wakes, and never sees the shadows in her eyes when she looks at him as anything other than the shadows a person of her skill set always carries.

* * *

"What's my name?" she asks him, when the alpha pack is dead, when the darach is dead, when Peter is dying.

"Anna," he says, gurgling on the wolfsbane and yew coated arrows imbedded in his flesh, flooding his system with their poison. Derek and his pack are kept back by Anna's invisible barricade, and Anna kneels beside him, smiling bloody. Wolfsbane flowers around them both, and her scent is all of death, grasping at him.

"What's my name?" she asks again, but his throat has seized and he cannot breathe and he is not _meant_ to die.

She kisses his cold lips and his eyelids and locks him away deep where he can never return.

"What's my name," she would say.

"Death," would be his answer.

* * *

_The God of Death found Death cavorting with Life under the summer sun and brought her to his domain, where her bright presence added to his realm with every step she took._

_Her mother had never understood that Death and Life are not separate but two sides of the same coin, not until her daughter left her with each bite into blood red fruit, and then she understood too well, and damned the world to a renewal of cold and misery and emptiness for as long as her daughter lay with her husband._

_It was never imprisonment. You cannot trap Death. You cannot have Life without Death, as you cannot know love without hate. Without Death there is only Existence, cancerous and eclipsing all regeneration, all evolution, all continuaton. Without Death, life is stasis. Death serves only to right the balance of existence._

* * *

**_A/N: _**I don't even know. I wrote this for myself while half-asleep. Teen Wolf has taken over my life, and Peter Hale is a bad man and I love it. Also, that's my headcanon for Persephone, that she's actually Death. Anna is not Persephone, but a...representation/disciple/thing related to her.


End file.
